Lonely
by Kaorots
Summary: Sometimes, Kakashi feels lonely and Iruka muses at his karma that doesn't seem to allow uneventful days. They try to understand. Kakairu friendship.


After the crappy thing that was "_Duck_" (and I'm strangely sad it got as many reviews on ffnet as _Remorse_, which is my baby - and even MORE on lj), I give you something more serious and reflected and borne.

Title: Lonely

Genre: Friendship, drama?

Characters: Iruka, Kakashi

Resume: "Sometimes, Kakashi feels lonely and Iruke muses at his karma that doesn't seem to allow uneventful days."

Status: One shot

Disclaimer : Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi, Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, Orochimaru and Jiraiya do not belong to me, but to Masashi Kishimoto, who wrote the manga _Naruto_.

Comment: Alright, so two things : Firstly, I tried writting this in present tense, but sometimes went back to the past tense --'. Which clearly shows writting in the past tense isn't for me an artistical choice but a bad habit. Which is... _bad_. I tried putting theses damn past tense verbs back into the present, but I fear I may have forgotten them. Which brings me to my "secondly" : this wasn't beta read, because I didn't dare bother **iluvshikamaru** as I'm already stalking her for my third chapter of Remorse which will be posted someday, I promise. Someday in the future! (Isn't that incredibly precise?)

* * *

Lonely

* * *

Sometimes, Kakashi feels lonely. And right now, he does. Sasuke has left –_ betrayed_, he reminds himself, and bitterness fills his mouth, its taste a reminder of poison - Naruto is away training with Jiraiya, and although Sakura still lives in the village, they have grown apart. The three sanin have stolen each one of his students – that, and Kakashi hasn't been good enough to keep the genin with him. He's forced to admit children aren't as simple as puppies you feed so as to have their trust and loyalty; sometimes, when seeing Naruto's expectant eyes at the prospective of eating ramen with his beloved Iruka-sensei, he almost sincerely believed, beyond a common comparison, that the boy could be considered a cub.

But Iruka _domesticated_ Naruto with far more than food. Kakashi doesn't want to say something as cheesy as "love", though, so he doesn't follow this train of thought and leaves it as it is, not going into way too disturbing details. It feels as if the better he is at taming and understanding dogs, the less he can get into these –_ his_ - children's hearts.

When he meets Sakura in the streets, the girl waves and smiles and chats, but doesn't stay – it hurts that she is so busy with her training she doesn't have time to spend with him, her old teacher. He starts to understand, now he isn't with her ten hours a day, unlike _before_, why sometimes her mother complained that she couldn't see her daughter very often, why her father sometimes looked at Sakura with very sad eyes as she excitedly told them about the mission team seven had just come back from, why it hurt these parent so much not to be able to share every moment of their daughter's life, be them happy or harsh, watching the girl grow up and away from them.

He worries about them. About them _all_, even though he knows he should forget about one, but he can't help it, they were a group, a team – a pack. He hopes Sasuke isn't going too far in the tunnel of darkness he has rushed into, isn't doing anything that could worsen his political situation, and prays that somehow they will be able to bring him home, save him from himself. He worries about Naruto too, and remembers the boy's hidden innocence, his cries at Haku's death, and wonders if Jiraiya is good enough to support him, before deciding that _he_ would have been a better choice, since he knows the blonde the best.

Gai comes on the roof now and then, and sits silently by his side while Kakashi reads his book. They stay in a silence only broken by the breathing and the rustling of pages, and it never ceases to amaze him that the black haired man is willing to drop his exuberant attitude for him without asking for anything in return, when he has never seen Kakashi's face. Before leaving, the other jounin pats his shoulder with a sigh. Not that the copy nin has been acting any different: he goes on missions, reads porn, gives one-eyed smiles, eats and sleeps properly, trains his dogs… Instead of the children… But Gai knows him, and he is worried, the idiot, because his friend had opened slightly when the kids had entered his life, and ever since they left he is under the impression Kakashi broods constantly, back to his former reserved self. Gai may know, he may have noticed, but he can't really understand: he has his students, _him_, he has his children.

Sitting on a roof during one of his scarce days off, warming himself with a thin clay of charka now the setting sun no longer shares its beams, turning the pages of his book once in a while, Kakashi wonders when he has grown so attached to team seven. He is used to caring for his comrades – it's his way of the ninja. The way he cares for these three brats isn't the same, though. He no longer is their teacher, he no longer can supervise them, watch over them, protect them…

Was this what Iruka felt, that day…?

* * *

Iruka's day has been quite eventless. Unless you count the fact nothing special happened as eventful: for once, no child got hurt during training, all reports were handed on time and properly filled and the gossip wine has had nothing juicy to work on and thus hasn't brought much noise in the mission room. It still was a heavy day of work, but since there was none of the usual additional stress, the chuunin thinks he can say he got lucky, for once.

To celebrate such a special occasion, he cooks. Nothing fancy, because he's tired and lazy, some spaghettis with the tomato sauce from a can he is happily surprised to find in the back of a cupboard. He weighs the pros and cons of adding fried sliced bacon in it, and after he decides it's a good day to improvise, he wonders if he should make enough for the later meals too, since he fears all the problems he stood clear from today will come back full force tomorrow. It's karma.

He sets the can of tomato sauce on the table, by a pack of frozen thinly sliced bacon and a paper box of dry spaghettis. He lights two of the four hops, one for the pasta's water, the other one to fry the bacon. When the door rings, he curses, rolls his eyes, opens the plastic pack with his teeth – and he knows, somewhere, that his mother would scream if she could see him – and empties it in the pan in which the oil is already boiling and spluttering. He almost burns himself, and when the doorbell rings again, groans in annoyance before lowering the heat so his bacon won't burn.

He opens the door with an irritated frown. He is surprised by his late guest's identity, and at the same time isn't – in a way, he has been waiting for something to happen, anything, because he never has normal days, _ever_.

"Good evening Kakashi-sensei."

The jounin just looks at him silently for a few seconds before his eye curves into a smile. He doesn't speak. Iruka crosses his arms over his chest; it is chilly outside, and he really doesn't want his nipples to be erect from the cold. It would be humiliating.

"Is there something I can do for you?" He tries again, doing his best not to show his annoyance, shifting his weigh to his other foot.

Kakahsi raises an eyebrow.

"No, not really. I don't think you could." The older man answers with a shrug. Then seeing the chuunin bristle and narrow his eyes, looking ready to attack, he raises a placating hand. It doesn't soothe Iruka, but gains Kakashi enough time to resume talking. "I came to apologise, actually."

This calms the pony-tailed man, who stands there blinking almost stupidly, before bringing a hand to his face to rub his left cheek in astonishment.

"Well, that is surprising." He mutters. Then, when he meets the jounin's deep gaze, he adds: "I'm sorry, but what for?"

Kakashi frowns visibly, and loses his friendly attitude, switching with a cold stance and look. Iruka almost rolls his eyes again but knows better than to provoke the other man. He instead chooses to act as innocent as he can and tries to convey an expectant look on his face when all he can think of is the bacon probably starting to smoke inside of his apartment. When the jounin realises Iruka is waiting for an answer, he frowns even more before resuming his usual nonchalant posture.

"For the chuunin exam. What else?"

Iruka's thoughts immediately leave the pan of frying bacon, and his face takes a serious expression. Though he is surprised Hatake Kaakshi, the copy nin of a thousand jutsu, would come and confide in him…

"You have got nothing to blame yourself for." He states firmly. "No one could have known Orochimaru was coming to mess everything up…"

"I'm not talking about that." Kakashi corrected him with a slightly bemused tone.

Iruka opens his mouth to ask what chuunin exam the jounin is talking about, then, not really caring whether his sarcasm is insubordination or not, but the older man beats him.

"I was referring to the nominations."

The what…?

Oh.

_Oh__!_

"I see…" Iruka trails, taking in the other man's appearance. Looking closely, he can notice signs of weariness in Kakashi: the man isn't slouching in his usual way, something in his posture lacks the control of the carefully lazy bending he is known for; under his visible eye, a slight dark mark states the jounin hasn't been sleeping properly lately – Iruka suspects the circle actually is even darker than it shows, hidden under a very thin and cautiously applied layer of make up. Not that Kakashi is vain, the chuunin thinks to himself, but the man doesn't want to be asked questions and bothered.

"Are you bored?" Iruka suddenly asks, looking up from his empty daydreaming gaze to the grey-haired man.

Surprised, Kakashi shakes his head. A smell of burnt up food comes disturb the chuunin's nostrils.

"You're lonely then." He deduces.

The jounin doesn't answer.

"Well, me too. Actually…" Iruka admits, grabbing the older man's forearm. The jounin startles but doesn't react violently, as one would suspect him to. "Take off your shoes, and come follow me inside. I was _trying_ to cook something when you came interrupt me but I think it should still be edible."

While he talks, Iruka drags Kakashi inside. He leaves the man take his shoes off at the entrance and walks quickly to the kitchen, where he lets out a growl of annoyance. The water for the pasta has boiled over and put out the fire of the hubs. The kitchen stinks of gas. He opens the window wide open and takes a deep breath of fresh air before stopping breathing, grabbing the pan of bacon which would have burned hadn't the water spilled over, and bringing it to the small living-bedroom. He sets it on the table's mat, breathes again, and realises this room also smells of gas. Barefoot at the entrance, Kakashi watches him open the other window of the small apartment.

"Sorry, it looks like the food won't be ready for a moment. I have to reheat water…" Iruka disappears again in the kitchen. An air stream has formed between the two open windows, ventilating the apartment, so he assumes it is safe to go back to the stove. Sitting on the couch, Kakashi listens to the sound of water being poured into the saucepan, and to the rustling of Iruka's clothes as the man bustles about.

* * *

"I'm not a stray dog you can feed, you know." Kakashi suddenly reminds his host between two mouthfuls.

They have been eating for a few minutes now, all spent in silence, the jounin back to back with Iruka and facing a small miror on the wall so as to make sure, by watching him, that the other man isn't going to peek at his bare face. Not that Kakashi eats slowly, he is too used to being fast, and is technically unable to savour a plate. Even though there isn't much to savour. The food is edible, which is a start, but the bacon is this close to being burned, and it is cold, the pasta having been ready too late after the meat was fried. It still is a pleasant diner, if strange.

"I was thinking along the lines of a stray cat." Iruka replies with a smirk his guest doesn't miss thanks to the miror.

Kakashi can't help but chuckle and quickly finishes his plate. He moistens his lips with his tongue to make sure no tomato sauce remains on them and lifts his mask back into its usual place. A nudge, and Iruka is informed the jounin is presentable. He pouts at his pasta, spuns it around his plate, taps his fork against the cheap ceramic and tries to decide whether he should finish eating or get rid of the food that, really, doesn't measure up to his former meals. He isn't a great cook but had he more money, he wouldn't mind being a whimsical and spoiled _fin gourmet_; as it is, he earns a teacher wage, which is nice but isn't much, and thus he has had to make shift with his common culnary skills and find a way to cook tasty but simple dishes. Until now, one could say he managed quite well.

"Don't play with your food." Kakashi snorts, standing by the chuunin's side. The later looks up at him, rolls his eyes, makes a face, hesitates some more and then goes back to eating.

When he's done, he grabs his and Kakashi's plates and forks and washes them in the kitchen. As he dries them with a dishcloth, he turns to find the jounin leaning on the doorway, giving him a one-eyed inquisitive look. Iruka raises an eyebrow.

"So, what now?" The grey-haired man asks, folding his arms.

The teacher rolls his eyes.

"If you're so bored, you could've helped me with the dishwashing."

Kakashi shakes his head absent-mindedly and keeps watching as his host sets the plates in a cupboard and throws the forks into a drawer that creaks when opened or closed.

He sighs.

"How do you do? Without the kids, I mean..."

Iruka pauses briefly before resuming his task consisting of hanging the rebellous dishcloth he has just used and that always refuses to stay on its hook. He frowns and pulls it down with annoyance until it is tamed. He then walks to the living room.

Kakashi follows him closely.

"I don't know." The chuunin answers, letting himself fall into a sitting position on the couch. The hinges protest when a second weight, Kakashi, is set on them. "I just try to live with it. Which doesn't mean I don't miss them."

The jounin looks at him thoughtfully.

"You have new ones every year. Do you miss them all?"

Iruka shakes his head.

"I know what you're thinking." He starts. The assertion has Kakashi's mind screaming that no, Iruka doesn't know! "A jounin-sensei's relationship with his students isn't the same as as an academy teacher's with his. I care for every single one of them, but there are so many one could say I care for them superficially. I don't mean that my caring isn't truthful, but that it often doesn't have time to spread to a deeper, more individual contact – or at least, that's what I like to believe. I know all of my students and can obviously tell them apart, I am able to explain who gets along with who and who doesn't – which helps when we compose the genin teams - but I won't be able to tell for sure what their favourite food is, or what colour they like best. Of course, there are exceptions." And at this, Kakashi unintentionally whispers Naruto's name. Iruka nods. "Naruto isn't even exactly an exception because he's grown into more than just a former student. Konohamaru also doesn't count. Think along the lines of Sakura who used to borrow some of my books. Shikamaru could have been one too, since he did the same, but he has gone too far and has needed me too little for a real bond to be created."

"So, what about a jounin-sensei?" Kakashi can't help but ask. His attachment to his genin team has been so unexpected he feels the need, the urge to understand. He knew, when he accepted the task consisting of shaping the brats into proper ninjas, that he was going to get to know them, to protect them, for it was his duty, but he never thought he would end _wanting _to do these things, and caring.

Iruka shrugs.

"It doesn't sound like a rhetorical question but it should be, since you now know through experience how it goes." He states with a slight frown. He can feel the jounin is trying to get somewhere but he doesn't know where, and the man doesn't seem to want to explain himself. It's slightly frustrating. "You have only three kids in your charge, three brats you have to tutor and monitor closely. You build and mould them into ninjas, the way their parents raised them – or tried to raise them - into human beings qualified to evolve in society. Me and the academy teachers are the bridge between both ways and worlds : a smooth transition from the cocoon home is supposed to be to the bothers and pains of growing up a ninja."

Kakashi is getting impatient. He shakes his head and straightens.

"And where do we get close to the kids?"

The chuunin glances towards him, his face unsure what expression to adopt, before it chooses a sad smile.

"You don't understand, do you? You play the role of a third relative almost on the same level of a mother or a father. Truthfully, not every jounin becomes this close to his genin team, which is normal since everyone doen't get along. These kid are people. If you like them as such, you end sort of adopting them. It doesn't help that you are an extremely important part of their education, their building into adults."

Kakashi still doesn't seem satisfied, which annoys Iruka.

"Look, there are things that can't be explained with patterns and arithmetic. Human relationships are one of these."

The jounin looks slightly away, lost in his thoughts, and the other man sighs, musing at his karma that seems not to allow uneventful days.

"I couldn't play this parental 'role'." Kakashi ends admitting.

Iruka groans and leans back heavily against the couch to look at his ceiling with distress. After a few seconds of silent plea for mercy, as no one comes save him from embarassing questions, he turns his face towards his guest.

"Sasuke lacked the original 'family cocoon' from which we take our students and slowly train them into ninjas. It's the original material we work with, the foundations of a ninja. And as a groundwork, it cannot be wobbly." He explains slowly, trying to word his thoughts. The jounin is making him analyse things he'd rather were left still. "Konoha is lucky Naruto hasn't followed him."

The jounin folds his arms, letting a gauging look wander over the teacher's face, analysing the tiniest twitches of his face to try and find bitterness, despair, but all he can find is a slight anger when the man mentions the lack of love of his former student's childhood.

"They say it's thanks to you he is loyal to the village." Kakashi notices folding his arms.

Iruka can't help but snort at this.

" 'They' don't know shit. I believe only _one_ person can't cause such a change. It's a slow process that brought Naruto where he is. A process that includes his own strength, but also the people he's met; and team seven – all of its members."

At the mention of his team, Kakashi shifts. The teacher doesn't miss the reaction.

"It's not your fault team seven has dissolved. Together, they were a group. Take one away and it all crumbles. Had _you_ left, it would have been the same."

Kakashi turns his face so sharply towards Iruka the chuunin mentally winces in sympathy for his neck and can't help but raise a hand towards his own to rub it. If this doesn't give the jounin a crick in the neck tomorrow, the teacher doesn't know what could.

"I wouldn't have left. _They_ should have stayed." The older man asserts darkly.

In this 'they', Iruka doesn't have trouble understanding 'Naruto and Sakura'.

"Listen to yourself!" He rebukes. "Can you sincerely picture you three trying to keep on as team seven, every minute noticing Sasuke's absence the way a recently crippled man tries to use his lacking hand to grab an object?" He frowns, anger flashing through his eyes, along with disappointment towards this man all consider a genius. "_That_ would have destroyed all the links and ties between you."

Kakashi closes his eye, his face tensed into a frown, trying to chase away the pictures Iruka's sentences bring to his mind. It is painful to admit, but the chuunin is right. The man doesn't give him time to think and mourn, though.

"Look, you're lonely, that much is obvious." He exclaims with a long sigh. The jounin opens his eye and glances sideways at the younger ninja. He calmly mentions that he has been lonely before, and can't help but find Iruka's apalled reaction amusing. "You weren't lonely in the same way, I suppose." The younger man shrugs.

Kakashi nods. No, before team seven, his loneliness had been a choice. Well, he had Gai; and he still has him. But Gai hasn't lost his students...

Iruka chuckles. There isn't anything funny really, except their situation, which is ridiculous.

"It's boring, being lonely." He admits.

There is no object to raise, and as much as Kakashi enjoys contradicting Iruka, if only to see the chuunin's narrowed eyes, he can only agree in silence, before he decides silence isn't enough.

"I can't protect them if we're apart." He insists.

"Well, welcome to my world!" Iruka laughs, shaking his head and refusing to let this gloomy athmosphere last any longer. "You just have to learn and live with it." He turns to the left and his bag by the couch's side, on the floor, delves into it and grabs a stack of paper sheets and a pen. "And maybe find a different way to interact with them now you no longer are their jounin-sensei. Become friends. They're almost young adults now, after all." He then leans back into his previous posture, takes the cap off his pen, throws it somewhere lost at his feet – a bad habit that has him regularly buying more pens because his end refusing to write, their ink having dried – and starts reading.

After a few minutes, and a particularly vicious grading that almost has him snarling loudly, he stops and stares at the sheet with annoyance. His stomach rumbles.

"Next time, bring take-out." Iruka grumbles before crossing out a full paragraph of huge handwriting and way too spaced words with an angry swipe.

Kakashi nods as Iruka starts cursing under his breath and underlining thrice a sentence before writing a big and desperate "NO!!" in an ink as red as his angry face.

"My neck's stiff." He hisses, and the chuunin hums darkly in answer.

One could almost say they are being lonely together, Kakashi muses.

* * *

Like it, hate it ? Please, tell me (thought I do hope you _like _it...)

* * *


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